ONE TWELVE "HOT & WET" (Bad Boy/Def Soul)

March 13, 2004|By Dennis Kelly, Special to The Morning Call -- Freelance

R&B "Hot & Wet" is the same ol' same ol' young male hip-hop/R&B stuff -- everybody's sipping drinks at the club and lusting after the ladies (or swearing the ladies are lusting after them). Only the beats change -- ever so slightly. Atlanta quartet One Twelve's idea of growth is switching from numbers (112) to words to spell out its name. Starting out as Puffy's backup crooners and putting out a ballad-heavy self-titled R&B in 1996, Marvin, Daron, Q and Mike apparently decided to "evolve" over the course of several albums so they could sound like everyone else. "Hot & Wet" guests -- Ludacris, Chingy and Joe Budden to name a few -- are added for novelty. But the first single from this late 2003 disc, "Right Here For U," is among a stretch of ballads in the middle of the disc that includes "All My Love" and "You Said," taking them back to those early ballad-filled days.